Small business email etiquette

Recently, a member of the Absolutely Fabulous Business Women Facebook group asked me about email etiquette for her home based business. She asked if she could send her newsletter to contacts in general, past colleagues and friends in addition to targeting former clients and prospects.

Email etiquette is such an overlooked subject and so many female entrepreneurs fail to understand the implications of getting it wrong.

If you have a list of people that you want to contact but are unsure about email etiquette, here are a few tips for getting it right.

Email etiquette tips

Firstly, I would never recommend sending a newsletter to anyone who has not subscribed. If you are using mailing software such as Mailchimp, this is strictly forbidden and if recipients report that they did not subscribe, you may get blacklisted.

It is also bad manners to automatically assume that someone wants to receive this newsletter and inviting yourself into their inbox without seeking permission first. They may already have an overflowing inbox and your addition to this is likely to cause offence. It’s like walking into their home without knocking and sitting down in front of them with no introduction and starting up a conversation.

22.—(1) This regulation applies to the transmission of unsolicited communications by means of electronic mail to individual subscribers.

(2) Except in the circumstances referred to in paragraph (3), a person shall neither transmit, nor instigate the transmission of, unsolicited communications for the purposes of direct marketing by means of electronic mail unless the recipient of the electronic mail has previously notified the sender that he consents for the time being to such communications being sent by, or at the instigation of, the sender.

(3) A person may send or instigate the sending of electronic mail for the purposes of direct marketing where—

(a)that person has obtained the contact details of the recipient of that electronic mail in the course of the sale or negotiations for the sale of a product or service to that recipient;

(b)the direct marketing is in respect of that person’s similar products and services only; and

(c)the recipient has been given a simple means of refusing (free of charge except for the costs of the transmission of the refusal) the use of his contact details for the purposes of such direct marketing, at the time that the details were initially collected, and, where he did not initially refuse the use of the details, at the time of each subsequent communication.

(4) A subscriber shall not permit his line to be used in contravention of paragraph (2).

If you have a database of contacts, I would suggest contacting these people individually to let them know about your business and inviting them to subscribe to your future newsletters. They can then opt in out of choice keeping you in line with the law.

Also, if you have various types of contacts such as colleagues, friends, clients etc, they are unlikely to all be attracted to just one message. Friends would respond better if addressed in a different way to colleagues as would clients and prospects. It will take a little more work creating separate messages but should get you far better results.

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2 Comments

Nigel Hill
on Jul 16, 2017 at 5:13 pm

This article gives bad advice. “If you have a database of contacts, I would suggest contacting these people to let them know about your business and inviting them to subscribe to your future newsletters” Wrong. “Sending emails to determine whether people want to receive marketing without the right consent, is still marketing and it is against the law.” said Steve Eckersley, ICO Head of Enforcement RE a ruling against emails sent by Honda between May and August 2016.

This post is NOT bad advice. In Nigel’s haste to criticise, he has failed to understand the article correctly (which I have to accept maybe I didn’t make abundantly clear). If you have a database of personal contacts that you have gained such as at networking events, you are able to keep in contact with them. This is what networking is all about. What Nigel is referring to is something completely different. Both Honda and Flybe were fined for blanket mailing a database with hundreds of thousands of contacts that they did not have personal relations with. This post is aimed at women running a business from home, not multi national companies with hundreds of thousands of anonymous contacts they have picked up through marketing. It is like comparing milk with cola! I appreciate all feedback, so have put in the additional word to contact ‘individually’ to help with any confusion.